Palisades returning to service after repairing another leak

Control room operators began brining the plant back online this morning. It takes about a day to get up to full power and sync up with the electric grid. This photo is from April 2012.

Mark Savage
/ Entergy

This post has been modified to correct language from the NRC.

The Palisades nuclear power plant is returning to service. It was shut down earlier this month to repair a water leak in the building where the actual reactor is located.

Workers found water was leaking through several cracks in a device that sits atop the nuclear reactor. Palisades Spokesman Mark Savage says they completely replaced that control rod device.

"We did ultrasonic testing on eight others on the reactor head to ensure that that was not occurring in those as well and it was not," Savage said. There are 45 control rods total at the plant.

Nuclear Regulatory Commission spokeswoman Viktoria Mytling says initially federal inspectors on site had questions about how the plant evaluated the extent of the problem in testing the additional eight control rod drive mechanisms.

“They did some tests. They provided us with the results and we said ‘hey this doesn’t give you the full picture’. So they had to go back and do it differently so that they had a whole picture," Mytling said.

Mytling says as a result the company had to repeat the tests on 8 control rod drive mechanisms so that they included the entire area of interest.

The NRC and Entergy, the company that owns Palisades, know where the leak was. Mitlying says the stress from the pressure and corrosion caused the crack, but the root cause has not been determined. A special investigation is underway.

This is the second time this summer Palisades had to shut down to repair some kind of leak.

Federal nuclear regulators are keeping a closer eye on the plant this year. Regulators have given Palisades one of the worst safety ratings in the country after a series of problems last year.

Last week, a coupling that attaches to a water pump failed. The water pump is one of three at the plant that cool safety equipment. The part was replaced and the pump is back in service. The same water pump had a coupling fail in 2009.

The Palisades Nuclear Power Plant near South Haven has shut down again.

This is the second time this summer Entergy Corporation has had to shut down the plant for repairs.

The plant shut down to refuel in April; that was normal. It restarted in early May.

But then a water leak in a tank above the control room caused the plant to shut back down just a few weeks later. Those repairs took a month and on July 11th the plant started up again. Though that leak appears to be fixed, it is still under investigation by special federal agents with the Nuclear Regulatory Commission.

But as it returned to service in July, Palisades spokesman Mark Savage says operators discovered a different water leak – this time in the building that holds the nuclear reactor. In a written statement, Savage called the leak “minor.”

The company noticed this leak when they restarted the plant after fixing that first leak in a tank above the control room. This leak is in a different area of the plant – the containment building. This building holds the nuclear reactor itself.

Prema Chandrathil is a spokeswoman for the Nuclear Regulatory Commission. She says the leak is not a threat to public health.

“It’s contained and it goes into the plant’s waste storage tank," Chandrathil said.

Chandrathil says the situation at Palisades is “serious” though. The NRC now has a specialized inspector to assist regular inspectors at the plant while the company makes repairs.

This story has been modified to correct a metric conversion and the reference to the substance tritium.

The Palisades plant near South Haven has an aluminum water tank that’s used in case of emergencies or when the plant needs to be refueled. Last month, Entergy, the company that owns the plant, shut the reactor down to fix a leak in the tank.

Palisades knew the tank was leaking for longer than the company first said

It appears that the water tank has been leaking for a lot longer than the company first admitted.

This year federal regulators will keep a close eye on the Palisades Nuclear Power Plant. The plant had three safety violations last year; that makes it one of only four nuclear plants in the nation with such a bad safety rating.

About 700 people work at Palisades every day. It’s one of (if not) the largest employers in Van Buren County. The plant is the county’s largest taxpayer. Those tax dollars go to a number of public schools, libraries, a hospital and local governments.

People who live by the plant near South Haven (Covert Township) are still trying to figure out what the safety violations mean to them. It’s making others, like Barbara Geisler and her husband Maynard Kauffman, uncomfortable.